NEW DELHI: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar, who was found dead in her hotel room in 2014, was suffering from mental agony due to the couple's strained relationship, the Delhi Police on Tuesday told a court.

The police accused Mr Tharoor of "torturing" his wife and abetting her suicide. The former Union minister, who is currently on bail in the case, has been charged by the police under a law on "a husband subjecting a woman to cruelty" and abetment of suicide.

The police told special judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar that according to the postmortem, the cause of Sunanda Pushkar's death was poisoning and 15 injury marks were found on her body.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told the court that the Sunanda Pushkar was upset and suffering from mental agony due to a scuffle with her husband.

The police gave these details in court during arguments on framing of charges against Mr Tharoor, who has denied allegations that he drove his wife to suicide.

The prosecutor said Ms Pushkar was also deeply upset about Mr Tharoor's alleged relationship with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar.

The prosecutor also apprised the court of Ms Pushkar's friend and journalist Nalini Singh's statement -- it is a part of the chargesheet -- that the relationship between the couple was tense and bad.

"I got a call from Sunanda who was crying and sobbing. I told her Mehr Tarar was nothing and she was everything. She wanted to take revenge from Tharoor and Terar. There was a lot of bad publicity in media. She told she helped Tharoor a lot in the IPL matter. She had found some messages between Tarar and Tharoor. She refused to go to their house and instead went to Leela hotel. The relation between the couple was very bad," Ms Singh had said in her statement.

The prosecutor told the court that an e-mail written by Mr Tharoor to Ms Tarar addressing her as "my darlingest" had been found.

"Such type of language was used. There are various letter which shows how intimate Tharoor and Trar were," he said.

Senior lawyer Vikas Pahwa, appearing for Mr Tharoor, refuted the claims and said he was not aware of any such e-mail.